Spending $ and Luke Bryan - non-related topics October 5, 2013

Monday we took the jeep in to a dealership to get it fixed.  A slew of things have been going wrong with it during the last month or so; in fact, so many things went wrong at the same time that we thought they must all be related.  But it turned out several different things went bad all about the same time.  One big, fat credit card bill later and they are all fixed.  I thought I would be able to skip drawing money from our 401 next month, but that's not going to happen!  But the jeep appears to be working now so it's worth it.  It's been a good vehicle with not much going wrong until now, and we are happy we don't have to look for a new car yet.

Wednesday I went to a Luke Bryan concert, courtesy of the two charming ladies I work for!  The concert was part of the "Luke Bryan Farm Tour" and was located about 2 hours away in Claxton, Georgia.  Claxton is famous for making Christmas fruitcakes but we didn't stop for that.  Instead we headed to a big field outside of town where we parked the car, walked over to the stage area and set up our lawn chairs.  There were typical fair food booths around, plus a couple that you will only find in the South.  I have never seen Gator-On-A-Stick or Fried-Bologna anywhere else!

The opening concert act was Chancie Neal, who got her break when Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson asked her to write a song for an episode of his TV show.  She's a cute young thing with a pretty good voice, but she will have to get better at staying on key in a live performance before she hits it big.  The second act was Cole Swindel, who just signed a record deal with Warner Brothers.  He was good to listen to and I will probably be hearing more of him on the radio.

The third act was The Peach Pickers, 3 song-writers who occasionally like to sing their own songs.  And wow, they have written some great songs!  The guys' names are Dallas Davidson, Rhett Akins and Ben Haslip, and I knew and loved every song they played, including "Gimme That Girl" (recorded by Joe Nichols),  "All About Tonight" and "Honey Bee" (Blake Shelton) and "Country Girl Shake It For Me" (Luke Bryan).

Luke came on last, of course, and did a great set.  From where we sat on our lawn chairs, the stage was far enough away that I couldn't get a good picture with my little point-and-click camera.

Since I can't enjoy myself without taking pictures, I took a few pictures of the big concert video screen.  Luke has a great smile.

He was good with the crowd and the crowd was good right back, except for the folks right next to me.  They were determined to drink as much beer as possible, shout at each other as loud as possible, and spill their beer on me.  After the beer-spilling I finally told them I was here to listen to the concert and not them; they gave me a wider berth after that.  The rest of the crowd was enthusiastic and fun.  Somewhere along the line a fake tree was put on stage and every time someone threw a bra onto the stage, it was draped on the tree.  That tree got pretty full.

Luke has a ton of top-40 hits and he interspersed them with a touch of hip-hop in just the right places.  

The whole crowd danced to "Crash My Party", "Rain Is A Good Thing", "Someone Else Calling You Baby", "All My Friends Say" and of course, "Country Girl Shake It For Me", plus a bunch more.  

It was a great concert and we had a really, really fun time.  Didn't get home until 2 am and it takes me longer to recover from that than it used to, but it was worth it!  

Two years ago: St. Louis Zoo
Three years ago: Portland
Four years ago: An Amazing Mission